


Cycles

by jibrailis



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Future Fic, Gen, Not Canon Compliant - The Legend of Korra
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-10
Updated: 2010-07-10
Packaged: 2017-10-10 12:03:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/99546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jibrailis/pseuds/jibrailis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The adventures of a very cranky waterbender and her long-suffering companion.</p><p>
  <i>"I don't want to be the bringer of anything except maybe good taste," Maka snaps.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cycles

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written before Legend of Korra was announced, so is completely speculative and outrageously jossed.

Maka's favourite food is dried seal blubber, her favourite game is scaring the penguins, and among the children of the Southern Water Tribe she is the second best at waterbending. She shares her tent with her parents and her little brother Hasu, who is eight and already the most annoying person alive. Hasu slides snow under her coat when she's sleeping, and every time she wakes up screeching. Sometimes Gran Gran stays in their tent and scolds Hasu, but Hasu's giggle always wins Gran Gran over. Being cute is a menace, Maka thinks grumpily.

Maka is tall, gangly, and the most uncute girl of the tribe, according to a poll of the boys that Kotori led. She retaliated by flinging water into Kotori's face and freezing it, which got her into heaps of trouble but was _so_ worth it.

Being Water Tribe is okay, she supposes. It gets boring living at the South Pole. It's a place of such extremes that even the extremes become boring. In the winter there are weeks when there is no light at all, and they use every bit of oil they can spare just to do basic chores like cooking and washing. In the summer it's always bright. The sun never leaves the sky; it only shimmies from place to place counterclockwise. Summer days are the best days, but it can be hard to sleep at night when the sunlight won't stop piercing Maka's eyelids.

The older children of the tribe get to make boats and paddle them out onto the water. Once a boy or girl turns fourteen they navigate the boat through chunks of ice, working together to dodge all the obstacles and survive. After that, they are allowed to paddle wherever they like, even so far that Maka can't see them from the village anymore, which she envies. Paddle far enough, she thinks, and maybe you can find a glimpse of the Earth Kingdom!

There's another ritual, one the elders don't explain. When a waterbender is eight years old, they are taken to the water's edge and held down, one elder to each arm. They are submerged beneath the ice cold water until their vision blurs and pain is like a bright solstice sun. Kotori says that kids have drowned in the ritual before, but Gran Gran says that's not true. The elders are always careful. Once they pull the child out of the water and wrap them in furs to dry, they ask what the child saw.

"A whole world of hurt," Kotori remembers, and the other boys laugh. What else are they supposed to see? Most kids just black out.

 

* * *

 

Kotori's great-grandfather was the Avatar. That's why all the kids in the village respect Kotori the most, even though he's short and his voice cracks. He's the only descendant of Avatar Aang still left in the Water Tribe. He has cousins, aunts, and uncles elsewhere in the world. Some of them were raised in the Water Tribe, but all of them left except for Kotori and his mother, and she died slipping down an ice cliff – she wasn't a bender at all.

Kotori loves to brag about his great-grandfather. When they were little, Maka used to give him her share of the blubber to get the 'special exclusive stories.' When she realized he was running the same scam with everyone, she stopped talking to him. Kotori is pathetic, she decides. He isn't a very good waterbender and he's definitely _not_ also an airbender, no matter what he says to impress the other girls. He's full of walrus poop. Sometimes Maka thinks, meanly, that Kotori isn't even a descendant of Avatar Aang at all. His mother must have had an affair – she learned that word from eavesdropping on Gran Gran.

Kotori has something he says once belonged to the Avatar. It's his special treasure. Maka saw it once, in exchange for a messy kiss, and she's not impressed. It's a stupid _necklace_. The Avatar was a man. Why would he own a necklace?

 

* * *

 

When she turns thirteen, she steals a boat and rows out into the silent icebergs by herself, leaving her village behind. She has strong arms from helping her father hunt. She could keep paddling and never stop.

But then she thinks of how sad her mother and father would be, how disappointed Gran Gran, and how stupid Hasu would grow up to be if she wasn't around to shout at him. So Maka turns back and paddles home.

 

* * *

 

One of Kotori's cousins visits the village. Everyone turns out to welcome her, but Maka lingers at the back of the crowd. She doesn't want to seem too interested in anyone related to Kotori; he might think that she actually respects him or something. Kotori's grownup cousin Salali is an airbender, one of the few left in the world. She has a round face and blue eyes, and when she laughs it sounds like a horse braying. The younger children clamour to see her air bend, so she shoots off a few whirlwinds. Hasu starts crying; he's so happy.

There's a party for Salali. The food is good. Maka's father brings in the fresh hunt and the women cook it into twelve different dishes. Maka sits around the fire and eats until her belly aches. She feels like throwing up; it's that wonderful.

She peers at Salali through slitted eyes. Salali is on the other side of the fire, putting up with Kotori's fawning. When the elders ask for a story, she stands up and tells them the tale of Avatar Aang and how he and his noble troop of companions ended the war with the Fire Nation and put Zuko the Fair on the throne. Maka has heard the story a million times before – thanks Kotori – but the way Salali tells it, it sounds sharp and tangible, like it's the memory of last week and not a hundred years ago. Maka realizes that maybe Salali actually met Avatar Aang or his wife, the great waterbender Katara. She shivers.

Later that night, when everyone is tiredly trudging back to their tents, Salali smiles at Maka. "You look like you enjoyed that story," she says.

"I guess," Maka replies, shrugging. "Sorry, I gotta go. My parents are calling."

 

* * *

 

"Insolent girl!" her father says, but he sounds affectionate.

Maka is fourteen, by all rights a woman of her tribe, but she's never too old to crawl into his lap and put her head underneath his chin. "You know you don't want me to be any different," she yawns.

 

* * *

 

Kotori tries to kiss her again. She freezes more than just his face.

 

* * *

 

The war with the renegade Earth Kingdom province starts when Maka is fifteen. Their village doesn't find out about it until she's sixteen though; news doesn't travel very fast to the South Pole, not even with messenger lemurs. Her parents are disturbed by the news, but Maka can't understand why. The Southern Water Tribe is neutral and so far away. How can the war possibly affect them?

Gran Gran says that some of the elders still remember the war with the Fire Nation. But this is different, Maka thinks. The Fire Nation was out to conquer the world, so of course their tribe should have been scared then. This is just a struggle with an upstart province. It's Earth Kingdom business, that's all. Only Kotori's family, who have relatives in the Earth Kingdom, need to be worried.

She overhears her parents talking about her. "Maka has such a bad attitude about everything," her mother whispers. "What should we do?"

"Nothing," says her father. "She's a teenage girl. It's natural."

"But—"

"Even the Avatar is allowed to be self-serving sometimes."

Maka snorts and moves away before her parents can discover her. She doesn't understand the significance of the conversation until later.

 

* * *

 

This is the beginning of the tale: she's never felt like she belonged with the other children. When the elders lowered her into the water, she didn't black out. Her eyes stayed wide open and she saw the dancing elements: water, earth, fire, and air. She struggled to breathe. It was too much. When they yanked her out of the water, she was gasping and choking, and her mother on the shore was crying.

 

* * *

 

They dress her in ceremonial robes. They paint her face blue, grey, and white. They put the bone comb in her hair, and they lead her out to where the village is solemn and waiting. Gran Gran croaks when she says, "Behold, your Avatar!" And for the moment there is perfect silence. Maka doesn't even feel like she's a part of her body anymore. This isn't real. The real Maka left the village long ago to find new lands and maybe have an adventure or two.

_I am not the Avatar_, she thinks angrily. _I am not a reincarnated spirit. I am just me, damn it._ Her anger hardens in her veins like icicles. There is a foreign man waiting for her by a great ship with green sails. She knows from the stories that he must be from the Earth Kingdom. And he has come to fetch her for the war.

"Let her have a companion," her mother begs, and the man in green gives a stiff nod.

"I'll go with you," Maka's father says, but Maka presses her lips together tightly.

"No way," she says. "I'm an adult. I don't need a chaperone."

"Stubborn girl," says her father.

Maka tosses her head and dares him to argue. They think she's the Avatar; that should be leverage enough, right?

"Then let Kotori go with you," Gran Gran says. "He has connections and can open doors."

"What?" Maka says. That's even worse than her father! But Kotori, she sees, has been prepped already. He's dressed in his furs and boots with his boomerang strapped to his back, and he looks almost...almost like a man, she thinks, but that's ridiculous. "If Kotori comes with me, I'll drop him in the ocean," she warns.

Kotori scoffs. "I'd like to see you _try_. I don't think you even are the Avatar."

"Kotori!" Gran Gran says sharply, but Maka smiles at that. Someone who doesn't think she's the Avatar? That's actually pretty wonderful.

 

* * *

 

Leaving the South Pole was supposed to be the adventure she's always dreamed of but it's not exactly what Maka expects. She spends most of the first few months in Ba Sing Se, paraded around from one dignitary to the next. She's supposed to make speeches about peace and amnesty, except they have speech writers who pick the words for her, so all she has to do is stand up in the middle of a feast and recite. Ba Sing Se is huge and marvellous, but she's not allowed to venture beyond the palace. She is, for the lack of a better word, even more bored than she was at home.

Kotori gets to explore. He goes into the city and comes back in the night full of experiences that make Maka's teeth grind. So he got to try wine for the first time. Big deal. So he went into a store. Who cares? So he saw a flying bison, descendant of the legendary Appa. Who would be interested in a flying bison anyway?

Maka feels trapped within her skin, her own spirit a traitor to who she thought she was and wanted to be. And it turns out that Ba Sing Se _doesn't_ really have the best interests of its people in mind. Maka finds herself furious at the amount of suffering and injustice she sees. It surprises her when she's always been so apathetic. But being apathetic in a life without too much hardship is one thing; being apathetic when she sees the refugee camp right under her window is another.

She and Kotori sneak out. Those stupid bureaucrats honestly didn't expect her to rebel; why else would they leave a flagon of water in her room?

 

* * *

 

She and Kotori travel to the renegade province, and along the way they run into monsters, ghosts, people who want to kill them, people who don't, and a bird named Ling Tai who follows them out of Omashu and never goes away. Maka folds paper hats from obscene sources for Ling Tai until Kotori makes her stop. Ling Tai doesn't mind, she says, and he gives her a withering look and says that this is yet another sign that she isn't really the Avatar.

Maka grins at him.

One thing leads to another. They go to the Fire Nation and climb volcanoes. They go to the ruins of the Air Temples and Maka is quiet. Then they return to the Earth Kingdom and liberate a village with Maka's waterbending and Kotori's quick thinking, before they find themselves on an island where there is a temple to Aang and a puzzle room that Kotori figures out before Maka does. They lay out their sleeping bags in the chamber beyond the puzzle door, which doesn't contain anything of interest to Maka, at least not initially. That night, a boy with an arrow on his head steps into her dream.

"Hi Maka!" he says.

She stares. "Who are you?"

"Aw, you really don't recognize me? I'm supposed to be a part of you." The boy is so cheery that it puts Maka off. She looks for an exit and then remembers this is a dream.

"Avatar Aang?" she asks tentatively.

"Yep!"

"I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised," Maka says. "We're in your temple. I bet you appear to all the lonely travelers."

"Nope, just you," Aang says. "Just the Avatar."

"I wish people would stop calling me that."

"Why? It's what you are," he replies. "Do you want people to stop calling you a waterbender? Or stop saying you're a brunette? Or that you're from the South Pole?"

"That's different."

"No it's not," Aang says. "Being the Avatar is hard sometimes, Maka. Believe me, I know. But it's not something to put on and then throw away. Because it's all of you. And it's all of us." A glowing line manifests behind Aang. The light is overwhelming, but Maka can see the vestiges of other faces: men, women, ambiguous in-betweens, some older than her, and some – like Aang – much, much younger. "I helped bring peace to the world when I was alive," Aang says, his voice echoing as he starts blurring into the other faces. "But now there is war again, and the duty of the Avatar is to be the bringer of peace."

"I don't want to be the bringer of anything except maybe good taste," Maka snaps.

Aang laughs, ghost-like. "I keep on telling you: it's not about whether you want it or not. You already are."

 

* * *

 

Maka doesn't tell Kotori about the dream. She doesn't say anything about it until they return to the Earth Kingdom and, when faced with the prospect of rescuing a group of street kids from organ snatchers, accidentally punches a hole into an earthen wall.

"Uh," she says.

"Uh," Kotori says.

"Run!" she screams.

 

* * *

 

Afterwards, Kotori looks visibly shaken. "That was earth bending."

"The wall was probably just weak," Maka says, painting her toenails. But she doesn't convince Kotori and he never looks at her the same way again. Damn it, and she was just growing used to him too.

 

* * *

 

The war goes on. Maka and Kotori do the best they can for the people who deserve it, and Maka learns not to scowl so much when people call her the Avatar. It's not their fault they're so deluded, not when Kotori himself starts treating her with distance and grave respect, which creeps her out. "Stop it!" she says, smacking his head when he actually starts to bow to her one time.

"Ow!" he says. "What'd you do that for?"

Returning to Ba Sing Se changes everything further. There's a siege on the city, and Maka may agree that Ba Sing Se has treated the provinces poorly but it's still not right for them to attack civilians like this. She's so angry that she lifts a boulder and throws it at a group of soldiers who are terrorizing a family. When they retaliate, she lifts another boulder, and another, and by then even she's not stubborn enough to think she can't earth bend.

The Fire Nation once laid siege to Ba Sing Se for six hundred days without success, but fellow earthbenders have no such difficulty. Maka wants to save the city but can't, and Kotori has to pick her up, kicking and screaming, so that they can flee.

She doesn't speak to anyone for seven days. She tries to conjure Aang in her dreams again but he doesn't come. She's never felt so alone. Except that Kotori cooks their meals and wipes her forehead of feverish sweat, and dribbles water between her cracked lips. He's so good to her, Maka realizes, and she promises to tell him one day. When all this is over.

 

* * *

 

Maka learns earthbending. Then she learns firebending. Then they pay a visit to Salali and she learns airbending.

Ba Sing Se and the renegade provinces – more than just one now – are still locked in a full-on war.

_Well_, thinks Maka glumly, _time to save the world._

But before that: Kotori kisses her for the third time. His lips are soft and nervous, and she enjoys it even as she shoves him away and says, "Ew, you do realize that I'm the reincarnation of your great-grandfather, right?"

He blushes so hard Princess Yue can see him on the moon. "Uh, I'm not...that is, my mother..." he says miserably.

Maka remembers that twisty word, affair. "Okay," she says. "You should've mentioned it sooner."

"Would it have changed anything?"

She thinks about it. "Probably not." Then she grabs Kotori and kisses him properly, showing him how it's done. Later, when they're lying together with their legs tangled, he shows her his prized necklace, which, as it turns out, didn't belong to Avatar Aang but to the great Katara, who gave it to her daughter, who gave it to her daughter, who gave it to her daughter-in-law even knowing that she was unfaithful. There's a complex story there, Maka thinks, that goes beyond right and wrong and duty.

"I want you to have it," Kotori says, and Maka sort of hates jewellery but still it's the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to her.

 

* * *

 

So she does save the world. Or the Earth Kingdom at least. Even though she doesn't do much. Most of the fighting is over by the time she shows up to help re-take the palace, and all she has to do is square off with the evil governor. He's actually pretty easy to beat. They should have given her a tougher enemy to fight, but as Kotori says, it's all, uh, symbolism or something.

When the celebrations and the orgies have been swept away, Maka joins the peace talks. Everyone makes an agreement for the Avatar to check on their lands every three years, a sort of mutually agreed inspection so that no one can start stockpiling weapons and hostilities again. "Great," Maka says. "Now I'm just an overqualified ambassador." But this time she gets to write her own speeches, and no one stops her from going into the city, so she figures it's all right. Vendors let her eat for free now that she's a hero, how about that.

And the flying bison is pretty neat too.

 

* * *

 

She doesn't think she's a hero though. She's still not sure they haven't made a mistake. Maybe she's just a fluke and the real Avatar is still out there somewhere; maybe there's another girl in another village who feels alone sometimes and doesn't know why.

"When I die, do you think there's some sort of retirement home for the spirits of former Avatars?" she muses. "Where I can play pai sho against Roku and gossip about Kiyoshi's hair and draw on Aang's head, and every seven days we gather in the spirit world and watch what you silly mortals are doing?"

"That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard," Kotori says, making his stretchy face. Then he wraps her in his arms. "Yeah, I bet it's exactly like that."


End file.
